The drain in my kitchen sink has been running kind of slowly, so I decided to try the baking soda and vinegar trick. I followed the instructions, but when I got to the very end, pouring boiling water down the drain, something seems to have gone wrong. The water isn’t going down the drain. At all. Somehow, I made things worse! I don’t understand what could have gone wrong- even if the baking soda and vinegar did absolutely nothing, water should still run down the drain as well as it did before. How could baking soda and vinegar completely clog it up? Anyone have any ideas about what happened here, and what I should do next?
If it were my sink, I’d think now’s the time to call a plumber.
The most likely thing I can think of is something came unstack from the side of the pipe but then jammed afterwards on something else, plugging it completely.
Plumber would be my vote too, or checking the u-bend depending on your confidence.
Otara
You probably loosened a clump of crud which then moved a ways down the pipe and caused a stoppage. First of all, good on you for not pouring drain cleaner down there, because you’ll need to do a little plunging and so on next.
First thing I’d try is put a catch basin under the trap (the U or J shaped bend under the drain, in that cabinet below your sink), put on some rubber gloves, grab an old towel and take the trap off (it unscrews in two places). There’ll be some water and a bit of crud in the trap, empty it out into the basin. As you unscrew the pipe anything that was in the drain will fall into the basin as well. Take a look and clean out any crud - you can flush the trap section out with fast water, like your garden hose on the front lawn. Remember to look into the pipe where it continues into the wall - you can try and snake it out since you’ve got it open already, or wait until after you’ve tried plunging.
Put the trap back on, snug the connections down, run some water and see if everything flows. If so, you’re set.
If not, you can try a sink plunger ($5, looks like a little toilet plunger) or a pipe snake ($20, big coil of springy wire with a spiral head at one end and a little thumbscrew & bent metal handgrip).
Fill the drain with water, enough that the plunger will have a good seal over the drain, and give it a bunch of firm plunges. That may dislodge the clump. If it does, flush the drain with hot water and you’re good.
If that doesn’t work, go under the sink again, remove the trap and feed the snake in following the directions. You will occasionally tighten the handgrip down, rotate it a few times, push it back and forth and that’ll eventually break up or snag the clog that’s blocking the pipe.
If the clog is further down the line you might need to look for a cleanout in the plumbing - that’s a little “onramp” with a removeable plug, you take it off with a wrench and it gives you access to stretches of pipe further downstream than what you can easily reach from, say, your sink. Cleanouts are often located outside of the house (my kitchen sink is at an external wall so the cleanout is on the other side of that wall, just above the ground) or in your crawlspace.
It’s not hard or expensive, and IME kitchen sink clogs aren’t vile (it’s just food and soap waste, unlike bathroom clogs which tend to involve masses of hair, poop, etc), just takes a little work and you’ll have some spilled water to clean up afterwards.
I just checked your link - some of their other unclogging methods strike me as not very smart (I’m not a plumber, just a homeowner so I’ve had to unclog a few drains).
In “How to clear a completely clogged kitchen drain” they suggest Drano if a plunger doesn’t work, and if Drano doesn’t work then they tell you to undo the trap under the sink. That means you may be opening up a pipe filled with caustic chemicals. Bad idea. Skip the drain cleaner completely.
Next they say that using a pipe snake requires “professional skill and training”. Maybe the big motorized jobbies that Roto-Rooter uses do but the hand-cranked ones require about as much professional skill and training as a screwdriver.
Crisis averted! The first half cup of water took about 10 minutes to go down. Now it’s working perfectly. I appreciate the advice, even though I won’t be needing it this time! I’ll bookmark this thread for future reference. I still have no idea what happened here, but if the sink gods are happy I’m happy.
Plunge it. You can even use a toilet plunger. Keep in mind that the up stroke is the power stroke.
Valgard’s advice about the trap is good as well. Plunging first (if successful) just avoids the messiness.
Unless your house is pure PVC I would never pour acid down a drain. Plunge it first and if that doesn’t work put a bucket underneath it and take the trap apart (assuming it’s not full of acid).
There is nothing you can take apart that a plumber can’t reassemble.